NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLY-FISHING. 459 
These implements are used on a scale very different to 
trout-fishing and, generally speaking, with less delicacy in 
proportion to the increase of sweep, and the coarseness of the 
tackle; but in salmon-fishing, so much depends upon the 
extent of water covered in throwing the fly, that no pains 
should be spared to acquire this power as fully as possible. 
It must be remembered that in salmon-fishing, unlike 
trout-fishing, the river is often too broad for any line to 
veach nearly over all the good casts, and success is here 
often obtained solely by the power which some men have 
of sending their fly into parts which their weaker or less 
expert rivals cannot possibly cover. With the young 
angler, the first thing to be done is to secure the assistance 
of some resident guide well acquainted with the haunts of 
the fish, who will give him confidence, if he does nothing 
else. Without his aid the angler, if unsuccessful, will 
wander from point to point, and will be unable to do jus- 
tice to himself, because he has no confidence that there are 
fish where he‘is trying for them. Indeed, even the experi- 
enced salmon-fisher is all the better for this assistance, if 
he is on strange water, as, though he may give a shrewd 
general guess as to the most probable casts for fish, he will 
often pass over good ones, and select those which are much 
‘inferior to his rejected localities. He will also get some 
information as to the probability of his flies suiting the 
particular river and time, and generally as to the fitness of 
his arrangements for that precise spot. This knowledge, 
once obtained, will serve as long as the river continues in 
the same state; but if rain, or the reverse, should alter the 
condition of the water, making it either much lower or 
